84, Charing Cross Road

This is the book equivalent of a perfect afternoon: over quickly, pleasant throughout, and not especially demanding of you. Whether that's a compliment depends entirely on what you came for.

This is a real epistolary memoir, a collection of letters exchanged over twenty years between Hanff, a broke New York writer with expensive literary tastes, and Frank, the chief buyer at Marks & Co., an antiquarian bookshop.

Hanff orders obscure classics she can't find stateside. Frank fulfills them with dry efficiency. Over time, something warmer develops, expanding to include the shop staff, Frank's family, and a neighbor or two. It's charming, occasionally funny, and in the final pages, genuinely sad.

The pleasure here is almost entirely tonal. Hanff's voice is brash, funny, and completely her own, and the contrast between her breezy American informality and Frank's measured British reserve makes their correspondence a masterclass in what letters can do that prose can't.

But the ceiling is real. Frank stays somewhat opaque throughout, and the relationship never quite achieves the depth the book seems to claim for it.

This is a book for readers who loves books about books, those who have a soft spot for epistolary form, or those who want something warm and short that goes down easy. If that's you, it will deliver. If you want to be changed by what you read, look elsewhere.